


Revolutions

by RobberBaroness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Bittersweet, Community: 6impearfics, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:25:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the revolution had come and gone, Reg was left to do battle with his own memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revolutions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 6impearfics prompt Ode on Melancholy. "Beauty, joy, pleasure and delight: devastated. This is the scent of the hopelessness, torment and despair of love. Lavender and wisteria, heart-wrenching pale rose, desolate white sandalwood and thin, tear-streaked white musk. "

It was midnight after the revolution, and it seemed the only change lay in seven graves in the Cemetery of Small Gods. But of course, after the world ends there will still be people hanging up the laundry and sweeping the streets, and just because a few coppers and a student died was no reason to ignore the practicalities of life. Revolutions came and went, and some people survived.

Reg Shoe lay in the darkness, too tired to cry. What difference would it have made?

It wasn't as if he'd gone unnoticed through life, Reg had to concede. There were wide-eyed idealists who had greedily drunken down his words, scoffing sergeants who had mocked his speeches but listened anyway- what more could a revolutionary ask for? And there had been girls, too. Some had been turned on by his talk of revolution, happy to lie beside him as he presumably made history, or else take part in the action themselves. And he had enjoyed the attention.

But the only love of his life that had really mattered had betrayed him. The republic had, in a bit of clumsy metaphor, ditched him in the middle of a dance for some toff in a waistcoat.

He still had the lilac, and wasn't sure he'd ever want to let go of it. It had shown he meant something, even if it was only to the ones who shot at him and the ones who fell with him.

A true revolutionary doesn't give in to sentimentality, to caring about such petty things as one individual's life or death. If this was true, and Reg knew it to be the case, then he was no revolutionary, for he cared as much for his own broken dreams as for the premature death of the republic.

A strangely pale darkness surrounded him, and it became clear that Death was not going to be bothered to put in an appearance for a mere flag-waver. He'd have to find his own way.

Reg railed at the darkness. It was not fair. It was not fair that he should die while the Unmentionables lived on, and it would not have been fair even if he had survived. His fist stuck the horrible blackness, and suddenly stopped.

The coffin of a freedom fighter is only well-constructed if they were successful. Otherwise, it's a plain wooden box that anyone could break.

He tore at the box that held him, not feeling any cuts or splinters. When his rage had subsided, there was only more packed dirt above him.

Revolutions come around again, he'd been told. That's why they were called revolutions. It was meant as a deterrent, but right now, those words finally brought a smile to Reg's face.

And, dirt beneath his nails as he dug, he began to climb out of his grave.


End file.
